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Carpathian Military District

(Redirected from Lvov Military District)

The Red Banner Carpathian Military District (Russian: Краснознамённый Прикарпатский военный округ, romanized: Krasnoznamyonniy voyénnyy ókrug, Ukrainian: Червонопрапорний Прикарпатський військовий округ, romanized: Chervonoprapornyi Prykarpatskyi viyskovyi okruh) was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces during the Cold War and subsequently of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the early Post-Soviet period.

Carpathian Military District
ПрикВО / PrikVO
Location of the district in the Soviet Union
Active3 May 1946 – January 1998
CountrySoviet Union (to 1992)
Ukraine (1992–1998)
TypeMilitary district
HQLviv
EngagementsHungarian Uprising
Operation Danube
Decorations Order of the Red Banner
Commanders
Notable
commanders

It was established on 3 May 1946 on the base of the 1st Ukrainian Front, 4th Ukrainian Front, and Lviv Military District. It became part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 1991 and was disbanded by being redesignated the Western Operational Command in January 1998.

History

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Two districts were formed in what was to become the district's territory in 1944 and 1945. During May 1944 in the freed territory of the West Ukraine the Lvov Military District was formed, headed by the former deputy commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. On 9 July 1945 the Carpathian Military District (PrikVO) was ordered created from the headquarters of the 4th Ukrainian Front in Chernovtsy. under the command of former front commander Army General Andrey Yeryomenko. It was responsible for troops on the territory of Stanislav, Ternopol, Chernovtsy, Vinnitsa, Zakarpattia, and Kamenets-Podolsk Oblasts, excluding Berezdovsky, Polonsky, Shepetovsky, Isyaslavsky, and Slavutsky Districts.[1]

The district's troops were mainly from the 4th Ukrainian Front, but also included units transferred from the Lvov and Kiev Military Districts. By the fall of 1945, the district included the 27th and 38th Armies, transferred from the Southern and Central Groups of Forces, respectively. The 35th Guards, 33rd, and 37th Rifle Corps were directly subordinated to the district headquarters when 27th Army disbanded around this time. On 8 September the 133rd Rifle Corps at Stanislav was disbanded with its two divisions. The 31st Tank Division (the former 31st Tank Corps) was also directly subordinated to the district at Proskurov.[1]

By a decree of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union on 3 May 1946, the Lvov and Carpathian Military Districts were merged as the Carpathian Military District with headquarters at Lvov. The District's territory included 10 regions of the Ukrainian SSR – Vinnytsia, Volyn, Zhitomir, Zakarpattia, Stanislav (Ivano-Frankivsk from 1962), Lvov, Rovno, Kamenets-Podolsk (Khmelnitsky from 1954), Ternopol, and Chernovtsy. Simultaneously, the 52nd Army began reorganizing on the district's territory as the 8th Mechanized Army. The newly created district included the 13th and 38th Armies, with air support provided by the 14th Air Army. The 13th and 38th Armies totalled five rifle corps headquarters and seventeen divisions (one tank, five mechanized, one cavalry, two mountain rifle, and eight rifle) between them.[1]

In 1947, the 50th, 280th, and 395th Rifle, 18th Tank, and the 23rd and 25th Mechanized Divisions were disbanded.[1] The 3rd Mountain Rifle Corps was in the Lvov Military District in September 1945. It became part of the 38th Army in the Carpathian Military District, but disbanded by 1957.

Troops of the district, including 57th Air Army, took part in 'Operation Danube,' the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Defector Vladimir Rezun ("Viktor Suvorov") detailed the disorganization the resulting mobilisation caused in his book The Liberators (1981). The District became subordinate to the Western Strategic Direction in the late 1970s/early 80s. The 8th Tank (formed from 8th Mechanised Army in 1957, which in its turn was formed from the 52nd Army in 1946), 13th, and 38th Armies were stationed in the District for most of its existence. The 14th Air Army and 2nd Army of the Soviet Air Defence Forces were also located there. Scott and Scott reported the HQ address in 1979 as Lviv-8, Vulytsa Vatutina, Bud 12.

On 1 September 1990, the 66th Artillery Corps was formed in Novye Belokorovichi, Zhitomir Oblast, from parts of the disbanded HQ 50th Rocket Division, 43rd Rocket Army.[2] This was the first artillery corps, an experiment, formed since the post-World War II demobilization. It took under command the pre-existing 26th and 81st Artillery Divisions, the 188th heavy howitzer artillery brigade, the 980th anti-tank and 440th reconnaissance artillery regiments and the 1596th property storage base (artillery), the former 72nd Artillery Division (cadre).[3]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk appointed Lieutenant General Petro Ivanovich Shulyak, former commander of the 13th Army, as commander of the district on April 7, 1994, in Presidential Ukaz N 143/94.

Former Soviet and Western sources agree on an end-1980s figure of three tank divisions and nine or ten motor rifle divisions in the District. In its last years under Ukrainian control the District saw a large reduction in the number of troops within it as Ukraine reduced the 780,000 troops it had inherited from the Soviet Union to comply with the treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Order of battle c.1988

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The District's forces at the end of the 1980s included:

Commanders since World War II

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Lvov Military District

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Carpathian Military District

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The Carpathian Military District's commanders included:

Ukraine

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District Museum

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The Museum of the History of the Troops of the Carpathian Military District (Ukrainian: Музей історії військ Прикарпатського військового округу) is a military history museum in Lviv depicting the history of the district. It is located on Stryjska Street on the territory of the 24th Mechanized Brigade. The museum was inaugurated on 7 May 1965 on the eve of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Second World War. It was created on the basis of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. In 1995, due to lack of funds for the maintenance of the museum, the district authorities made the decision to put it up for sale.[8] In 1999, a multi-story hotel was planned to be built there, but during the excavation work, human bones were found by excavator, which resulted in the ceasing of construction at the request of members of the Lviv City Council.[9] Lieutenant General Shulyak decided to transfer the funds of the former museum to the premises of the Iron Division Museum, located on the territory of the 7th Regiment of the 24th Mechanized Brigade. The task of creating a new museum was assigned to Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Rogozhin, with the process taking up 3 months in early 1996.

Sports

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d Feskov et al 2013, pp. 462–466.
  2. ^ Feskov et al 2013, p. 285.
  3. ^ Note that Holm has a mis-transcription, 50 Rocket Army rather than 50 Rocket Division, at Holm, Michael. "66th Artillery Corps". www.ww2.dk. Retrieved 2016-07-21.
  4. ^ "У миротворчих операціях у Косовому, Республіці Ірак, Лівані та Сьєрра-Леоне взяли участь понад 5 тисяч офіцерів, прапорщиків та солдатів 8-го армійського корпусу Сухопутних військ ЗС України, який в ці дні відзначає своє 60-річчя" [More than 5,000 military personnel of the 8th Army Corps in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone, celebrate its 60th anniversary]. mil.gov.ua. Press Center of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. 16 June 2006. Archived from the original on 18 February 2012. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
  5. ^ Feskov et al 2013, pp. 200, 201, 202, 470.
  6. ^ Feskov et al 2013, pp. 464–465
  7. ^ a b c "КОМАНДУВАЧІ ПрикВО" [Commanders of the PriKVO] (PDF). Viysko Ukrainy (in Ukrainian). Vol. 12, no. 114. December 2009. p. 58. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  8. ^ "В Парку культури збираються збудувати готель Hilton". portal.lviv.ua (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2020-07-09.
  9. ^ Бандрівський Микола Степанович

References

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  • Feskov, V.I.; Golikov, V.I.; Kalashnikov, K.A.; Slugin, S.A. (2013). Вооруженные силы СССР после Второй Мировой войны: от Красной Армии к Советской [The Armed Forces of the USSR after World War II: From the Red Army to the Soviet: Part 1 Land Forces] (in Russian). Tomsk: Scientific and Technical Literature Publishing. ISBN 9785895035306.
  • Lenskii, A.G.; Tsybin, M.M. (2001). Советские сухопутные войска в последний год Союза ССР [The Soviet Ground Forces in the Last Years of the USSR]. St Petersburg: B&K Publishers. ISBN 5-93414-063-9.
  • Scott and Scott, The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, Westview Press, Boulder, Co., 1979
  • International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1990-91

Further reading

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  • Варенников В. И. Неповторимое. В 7 томах. Часть V. Прикарпатский военный округ. — М.: Советский писатель, 2001. — 320 стр. Тираж 7000 экз. ISBN 5-265-03489-7
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